Weekend Watch: The Dig And Apollo 11: Quarantine
Going underground and into isolation with a new film and a fresh short
Image Credit: Netflix
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan go looking for history and the Apollo astronauts make it in a short film.
The sort of film that would probably fit in a Sunday tea-time slot in the UK, The Dig looks to unearth drama around the discovery of an Anglo-Saxon ship in a burial mound at Sutton Hoo in 1938. Yet despite the presence of Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan leading the cast, it just doesn’t quite prove to be worth the hard work of sitting through the film itself.
A year before World War II consumes the globe, widow Edith Pretty (Mulligan) engages the services of self-taught archaeologist Basil Brown to uncover whatever treasures are lurking beneath the soil of her sprawling estate. Given that this is Sutton Hoo, most British schoolchildren will know what happens next, but Simon Stone’s film, adapted from John Preston’s novel by Moira Buffini, looks to uncover the political and social drama around the discovery. Brown’s discoveries are claimed by local museum officials, and, as the results become more and more exciting, other academics get involved, looking to claim credit. Against that backdrop, there is the ticking clock of the coming conflict, while archaeologists Stuart (Ben Chaplin) and Peggy Piggott (Lily James) pitch in to help, which itself leads to tension as she kicks off an affair with Edith’s cousin Rory Lomax (Johnny Flynn).
It is, for the most part, a genteel drama that rests on what is taken out of the ground, and your interest in the story will heavily lean on how much you appreciate history in the making. Sadly, the human side of things is strained and a lot shallower than any of the story’s burial mounds. Mulligan and Fiennes do their best to blow the dust off the characterization, but there is largely a dearth of compelling plot. Excitement is also in short supply aside from one or two moments, such as Basil nearly being buried early in the digging process. The is mostly used in the romantic subplot between Peggy and Rory, but it’s far from subtle.
Sagging under the weight of its own archaeological import with little script support, The Dig is sadly unlikely to go down in the annals of film history.
The Dig will be on Netflix tomorrow.
Image Credit: Neon
From a young age, I’ve been obsessed with space travel and, both factual and fictional. I had space shuttle cross-sections on my walls before pop stars or movie posters ever appeared, and one of my most memorable trips as a teenager was visiting the Kennedy Space Center with my parents (and my father falling asleep during an IMAX presentation of a shuttle launch; quite the achievement in the face of one of the loudest experiences of my life). Even today, I remain an eager fan of space exploration, and while I can interview big Hollywood stars with nary a touch of nerves, I get tongue-tied and star-struck around astronauts.
Which is a long way of saying that I was a big proponent for 2019’s Apollo 11, director Todd Douglas Miller’s film assembled from unseen footage around the iconic rocket launch and mission. Entirely free of talking heads, it let the pictures do the talking (aside from a couple of lines from the likes of Neil Armstrong) and was a fascinating look at the sheer effort it takes to blast a crew to the moon. It’s fair to say I was shocked when it didn’t even make the final Oscar nomination list. Miller and his production team are back with a short film, Apollo 11: Quarantine, which makes an ideal double bill with the main documentary, even if it sometimes feels like a deleted scene on a Blu-ray release. And ironically, while shorts are usually shown before the feature, this would technically serve as a spoiler for the successful end of the mission, especially if you don’t somehow know your NASA history.
Mostly, I was just glad for more from the keen-eyed team who assembled the documentary, and they couldn’t find a timelier moment to release it. Focusing on the moments after splashdown and the days that Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins spent in medically required quarantine to preserve any life-forms that might have come back with them, and protect their fellow humans from any potentially harmful lunar bacteria. After months spent mostly in the house, we all feel like the astronauts crammed into what is essentially a tricked-out Airstream trailer as they’re transported by ship and then plane back to the NASA Johnson Space Center in Texas. They are, naturally at a remove, for the most part, waving from behind protective windows and screens, comedy signs such as “Do Not Feed The Animals” adorning the outside. It’s the little moments that make the new short count – Armstrong celebrating a birthday in quarantine is all of us over the last year. And there is also the fascinating process side, as film canisters back from the Moon are unwrapped and sanitized before viewing and rock samples studied. Shots of a lone technician spraying the walkway behind where the crew has entered their new “home” could have come from today.
You may not be completely ready to watch a film about people stuck in one place for safety reasons, but there’s no denying the quiet power of a documentary that gives you close access to one of the biggest moments in human history.
Apollo 11: Quarantine will be in select IMAX cinemas from tomorrow, ahead of a release on Premium Video On Demand on 5 February.